


through stained glass eyes

by boyofwonder



Category: DCU (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mary Grayson - mentioned, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Teen Titans era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23508694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyofwonder/pseuds/boyofwonder
Summary: Unshed tears have a way of finding their way out, sooner or later.In which Dick opens up, and Roy listens.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Roy Harper
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56





	through stained glass eyes

**Author's Note:**

> title from "stained glass eyes and colorful tears" by pierce the veil.

Dick doesn’t have to think about it before it’s already done; as soon as he hears the careful click and slide of the door behind him, his hand’s already brought the domino mask up and put it back on. 

In the streets of Gotham, the white lenses equip him with a different way of seeing things, be it night vision, thermal vision, or whatever’s the newest update he added. On the balcony of the Teen Titans safehouse on a quiet night there’s no need for any of that. There’s no need for him to be wearing it at all times, either, but he’s gotten into the habit of doing so anyway; a habit he’s suddenly thankful for, since it means he still has it with him. He couldn’t trust the darkness of the night to hide the puffiness of his eyes, red with unshed tears, as well as the domino mask does. 

A second ago, tears dangled on his eyelids the same way his legs dangle off the edge of the balcony railing. Just as he doesn’t let himself fall, he didn’t let the tears spill. 

Now he’s glad he didn’t; swiping at them would be conspicuous. The mask had come off so he could look at the night sky unfiltered; he didn’t mind sharing his sorrow with the moon, high in the sky and bathing him in a gentle comforting light. But he does mind any of the other Titans seeing him like this (there’s something about that, about what stops him from sharing that part of himself, that he doesn’t want to think too much about).

Whoever opened the door walks toward him, and Dick suddenly notices how tensely he’s holding himself. Would it be too obvious to straighten his shoulders, loosen the grip his hands have taken on the railing? He does anyways, trying to pass it off as changing his posture. 

There’s a soft nudge against his shoulder, as if mimicking pushing him off his perch. At first he’d thought the person might be Donna, from the gentleness of the steps, but he recognizes Roy in the gesture. The most Dick can react without it feeling too forced is a huff of breath, that’s too wet to really sound like laughter. 

When Roy settles next to him, leaning back against the railing while facing the door he’d come through, in the motion his naked arm brushes against Dick’s, but the touch is gone as quickly as it appeared. Dick tries not to mourn it, not to immediately pull closer. It’s colder outside than he initially noticed, and now there’s goosebumps on his skin; maybe he could pretend that all he wants from the contact is the warmth it brings. Not freezing in his leotard seems like a good excuse.

He’s not entirely sure whether Roy could be fooled by that.

“Did we already annoy our leader into getting away from us?” 

Dick goes to reply, smugly or sarcastically to deflect from a real answer, but realizes the lump in his throat won’t let him speak. It tightens up the more he becomes aware of it. It’s all he can do to look sideways at Roy and give him his trademark mysterious Robin smile in hopes that he’ll say something else.

Roy isn’t looking at Dick, though. Only his profile is visible as he stares through the glass doors, the warm light from inside brightening up his face as the cold light from the moon makes his copper hair sparkle, tousled after wearing the hat all day. He’s changed out of his costume and into jeans and a t-shirt, the sleeves rolled up; he looks so carefree and comfortable with himself that next to him, still wearing the costume and the mask, Dick can’t help feeling like it’s obvious that he’s hiding something. Funny how that has the opposite effect of making him feel exposed. 

“Donna was worried about you.” Roy says, when he realizes Dick won’t answer. 

Dick looks away, swallowing and forcing himself to push words out of his mouth. “She was?”

“Yeah. You disappeared from the fight for a few minutes today, and when you came back you were acting all weird. Like you were rushing into getting it over with, and you were all quiet after.” A pause. “That’s what she pointed out, anyways.”

Dick frowns, chiding himself for being so obvious about it. “And they sent _you_ to talk to me?”

As soon as the words are out Dick wants to cringe at himself. He feels guilty when Roy lets out a self deprecating laugh. “Would I be your first pick for dealing with emotional shit?”

Dick doesn’t say that maybe he would. He doesn’t say that there’s something about Roy that makes a part of him feel unjudged in his presence despite knowing he’ll never live up to how cool Roy is. He doesn’t say that there’s something about Roy that gets him wanting to open up against his better instincts. Given the right opportunity he might bear out his soul to him, and that scares him more than any villain they’ve faced. 

So he only shrugs. 

Then he realizes Roy never really said why he’s here. Dick doesn’t dare ask.

In the silence that follows, the sounds from inside start drifting out. The music that’s been turned to a low volume is eclipsed by Wally’s voice complaining about something. 

“If Wally keeps pestering Garth he might snap and actually kill him.”

Dick actually snorts this time, his chest a bit lighter. “So that’s why you came out here.”

Visibly confused, Roy turns to Dick. “Huh?”

“Plausible deniability.”

The smile Roy gives him is wide and crooked; even with the mask lenses between them, when Roy’s gaze lingers on him a bit too long Dick has to look away. Out of the corner of his eyes, he doesn’t see Roy turn away again. 

“Nah, it wouldn’t get to that. We’d all cover up for Garth too well. As long as you don’t snitch.”

“I’m not a snitch.”

“Sure you’re not.”

Dick rolls his eyes and pushes his shoulder against Roy’s without thinking about it. The movement brings him closer again; when he starts to pull away, Roy compensates for it as he sits up on the railing properly, still facing the opposite side. Warmth spreads from the spot where their arms are touching, and he’s glad Roy can’t see him when he feels the heat crawl up to his cheeks. 

It’s quiet again, and Dick becomes surprised by how that makes him feel. Calm.

He’s not sure whether it’s the fact that they’re close but still unable to see each other’s faces, or that Roy’s not playing his usual overly smug act, or if Dick’s just worn out, but the words – so hard to say a few moments earlier – spill out all on their own. “There was a woman today.”

Roy doesn’t react, and doesn’t turn to look at him either. It’s a relief. 

The moon is half hidden by clouds passing by; he fixes his eyes onto it as he continues speaking. “I was evacuating civilians, just trying to direct them away from the fight and keep them calm, when someone grabbed my arm. I almost reacted aggressively thinking it was an attack, I was on such high alert.” He huffs. “That’s not really the point.

“It was a woman who was pulling at me, wide-eyed, breathing heavily and clearly worried out of her mind about something. I thought she might start screaming at me or asking things in confusion, ‘cause that’s usually how a situation like that goes, but she held my gaze quietly until she was sure she had my attention.

“I couldn’t really hear the first words she told me, because I was just focused on the fact that…” Dick took a deep breath, willing his voice not to tremble. “She looked so much like my mother.”

The scene plays back in his head; he remembers feeling like time had stopped for a second in the middle of all the chaos. The woman’s brows knitted into worry, her brown eyes pleading but determined. So much like his mother’s. 

“I forced myself to snap out of it quickly enough to hear her tell me about her son and how they’d gotten separated in the panic. Begged me to help her find him. If I’d stopped to be rational about it I might have told her to go with everyone else, find a more practical way of helping her. There wasn’t more than a slim chance that we’d find him with how everyone was screaming and running around. But before I knew it I was agreeing to look for him together.”

In situations like that, it becomes so hard to think about the big picture. Should he deny the request of one person to focus on the crowd? The greater good becomes meaningless when you’re confronted with a single person suffering. He could never say no to someone asking for help.

But in that moment, more than anything, he could never say no to those eyes. 

“It was fairly easy to locate him, in the end. We were lucky he hadn’t gotten too far away; he was smart to run away from the crowd, had ducked into an alley close to where the woman had lost him. He was curled up in a ball, shaking, probably crying though I couldn’t tell yet. He was covering his ears from the noise of explosions in the background. 

“I could’ve left then. We’d found him, she could find their way out with the rest of the crowd. But I’d nearly forgotten the reason for me being there at all, the fight seemed so distant. It took us a few seconds to get the kid to look up, and as soon as he did and his eyes focused on his mother he jumped into her arms. He couldn’t be older than five years old.”

Dick takes another stabilizing breath as tears well up in his eyes. Crying with the domino mask on is uncomfortable; tears stick to it, and it becomes hot, and it never stops feeling wet. Like the tears won’t leave his face, stuck under the mask until he finally takes it off.

“I couldn’t look away from the image of the mother holding her son. The kid was still shaking, but she… she seemed calmer than ever, whispering reassuring words, one hand rubbing circles on his back and the other sifting through his hair.” _The exact same way my mother would_ , despite everything, Dick can’t bring himself to say out loud.

“After a few seconds she noticed I was still there, just standing looking at them like an idiot. She stood up, still holding her son to her side, and I could see her face and there were tears just quietly streaming down, and I thought she would just thank me and go. But she smiled and walked up to me and hugged me.”

His voice catches; not on the words, but on the memory. When his mother used to hug him he never got to be more than barely tall enough to wrap his arms around her torso. Today his head had fit against the woman’s shoulder, and that difference alone tugged at something he hadn’t felt so strongly in a long time. 

Another time he might stop talking there; another time he might not have said anything at all. But Roy hasn’t moved from his side, hasn’t made a comment of any kind. He focuses on Roy’s soft breathing and the sides of their arms touching – he might have slipped away into the memory without that to ground him. 

“These past few months…” His voice becomes quieter, and he has to force it above a whisper. “I’ve been feeling so far away from my parents, like every year, every single moment that passes I forget one more thing about them. I find it harder and harder to picture their faces without looking at pictures. But as soon as I saw this woman it was like I could see my mum clearly in my mind. I saw the exact expression she got whenever she worried about me.”

He fights down the sob that’s born at the bottom of his throat. If he lets that out he’s afraid he’d never stop. Something would break, and he’d never stop. 

Would that be so bad, to let that go for a while?

He still fights it down. Wins, for the time being.

“And when she hugged me we were in the middle of a super-villain attack, and I felt so goddamn stupid because all I could think was…” One last push. “That I didn’t want her to let go.”

He’d hated how safe he’d felt, and how illogical that was. It had taken all of his self control not to squeeze back as hard as he wanted to; then, it had taken all of his self control not to shove her away and run in the opposite direction. He’d made a show of making sure they were both unharmed, at least to justify his presence there in some way – to himself or to the woman, he wasn’t sure. 

The whole admission had him feeling raw around the edges. The softest breeze might break him apart.

“You can take it off, you know.”

The sentence – the first Roy’s said in a while – confuses Dick so much he almost laughs. “What?”

“The mask. You’re safe with us.” _With me_ , it feels like he’s trying to say, but that might be Dick’s imagination filling in the blanks with what he wants to hear. 

“I know that, I’ve already told you guys who I am.”

He feels Roy shift, his gaze now on Dick. The touch of their arms is gone, but Dick’s not feeling cold anymore. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

There’s so many masks Dick has put up that he can’t say he’s certain which one Roy’s referring to. But he can feel the tears still pooling beneath the domino mask, even after he’s stopped crying. Still sticking, still hot, still wet. And he does feel safe. _With Roy._

He brings up his hand to press at the spot on the side that will get it to release. The squelching sound it makes as he tugs it away from his skin is almost ridiculous. He holds the domino mask on his lap, his other hand tight on the railing. It has nothing to do with the fear of falling. (Or maybe, in a less literal way, it does.) 

Dick doesn’t startle when he feels a hand cup the side of his face, the side that’s still facing away; he was half expecting it, really. Surprising himself, he turns so that he and Roy are face to face, their eyes meeting with no barriers in between for the first time since he’d walked out into the balcony. He tries not to make it feel like he’s shying away from Roy’s hand; he’s not. 

What did he expect to find in Roy’s face? He wouldn’t have turned if he thought all he’d see would be pity, but there’s still a part of him that’s surprised that’s not what he finds. He looks… uncharacteristically solemn. His hair is still sparkling under the moonlight. Now he can see that his eyes are, too. 

For the first time in a while, he doesn’t care about the wetness under his eyes. He’s aware that it’s there; all the more so when Roy’s hand moves, slightly, slowly, to allow his thumb to wipe some of it away. Dick can’t stop the self-conscious laugh that leaves him, wet and ugly. Roy smiles at him in a way that betrays too much understanding. 

“It’s normal to forget things, but remembering isn’t only about faces, Rob.” His hand leaves Dick’s face, not before trailing his fingers down the side of it. It moves to cover Dick’s hand, the one that’s gripping the railing in between them. Dick’s doesn’t move his, but he feels it relax under Roy. As if he doesn’t need to hold on as tightly. “There’s always something of them we carry. Sometimes it’s what they taught us, sometimes it’s as literal as something they gave us.”

It becomes too much again, looking at Roy. But not the kind of too much that makes him want to pull away; it’s the kind that he wants to get used to, learn to accept. He drops his head onto Roy’s shoulder, drained. When he speaks next, he feels it as well as hears it, the words from Roy’s chest reverberating against something inside of Dick. 

“Sometimes it’s just the way we felt when we were with them.” Roy finishes. 

Every time he wears the Robin colours – just like he is tonight, like he did today –, he honours that feeling.

Neither of them say anything else for a while, Roy’s hand a constant weight on top of Dick’s. He doesn’t exactly feel… normal, again, but maybe that’s for the best. 

“Who knew you got all this sentimentality in you, Harper?” Dick jokes, finally, and there’s no spell breaking or atmosphere shattering. The air’s just as heavy as it was before. 

This time, when Roy laughs, it’s not in self deprecation, and Dick doesn’t feel guilty. 

“What do you mean? I’m an emotions-on-my-sleeve kind of guy.”

He says it like he’s joking, but Dick realizes there’s more truth to that than Roy would admit.

Roy squeezes Dick’s hand. “Wanna go back inside?”

Dick’s hand is warm underneath Roy’s. In a surge of bravery, he turns it palm side up and intertwines their fingers. 

“In a while.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i know it’s a small detail, but i mentioned/implied mary having brown eyes. i tried looking it up, but canon eye colours are a lie. i gave her brown eyes because i wanted to.
> 
> writing dick dealing with emotions is always very cathartic for me (there might be lots of projection involved), and i hope some of that feeling made it through. kudos and comments are very much appreciated, and especially with this one i'd love to know what y'all thought! you can also hit me up on [tumblr](http://rredarrow.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
